Homeworks Trust have been thinking about the importance of recording some of the processes that have been occurring over the past 4 years that do harm to women, children and the community.

One of these things is the number of organisations, groups and services that have closed. A couple of examples in Auckland are EDEN – the Eating Disorder Network – and a Refugee and Migrant resettlement service. Many other services and organisations have had to radically restructure in order to survive. The ongoing funding crisis for sexual violence counselling and crisis services around the country, and the restructuring of mental health residential services to become landlords of (unsupported) housing are two examples of this. You’ll have your own examples in your community.

Our plan is to record the groups and services – women’s and others – that have closed or radically reduced services over the past 4 years before they are all forgotten. Even a partial picture will, I think, be sobering.

We would like to call upon the collective memories of the women in your area to provide this information. Would you be able to help us? This project can only succeed if we all try to recall what has disappeared and/or happened in our areas.

The questions that we want to have answered are:

What services/groups have closed or disappeared in the past 4 years?

What services have had to significantly cut services and/or restructure because of lack of funding/funding cuts in the last 4 years?

What effect has this had on your community? On the safety of women and children?

What, if any, alternatives has the community come up with to replace this service?

What other information can you give us? We would be interested in numbers of staff who lost their jobs, the actual amount of funding that was lost (and the original amount required to run the service) and any thing else that you think is relevant.

We will also need to know:

What area you are collating information from

A contact person. We need a contact person who will gather information and send it to us, who we can get back to with any questions and who is our contact when we report back to your area. Contact people will be able to choose to be named as one of the researchers or to remain anonymous and just be acknowledged in the general thank you to all the women who contributed.

We are concerned that although this government says it has a commitment to the safety and well-being of women, children and communities, this is being compromised by the funding cuts that have lead to so many services disappearing.

Homeworks Trust is collating this information on behalf of women and social justice organisations around the country. We are going to try and collect information via Official Information Act requests to local Councils and DHBs in selected areas and also generally from MSD, Te Puni Kokiri, the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs and the Ministry of Health.

This information will provide us all with evidence to ask the political parties, in the lead up to the next election, what they intend to do to address the issues raised by this survey and to protect the wellbeing of women, children and those reliant on specialist services around the country. Organisations will also be able to use this information in CEDAW and similar reporting processes.

Our contact people are:

For questions: and to clarify any thing about the project please call Debbie Hager, 09 816 9339